February 05, 2011

I was thinking that just recently. The Muslim Brotherhood kept out of the Egyptian fray until the rising looked unstoppable. Hamas wouldn't allow solidarity with Egypt demonstrations until the Brotherhood was on board. Such opportunism ought to be grist to the American imperial mill. I don't do punditry so I kept these thoughts to myself until I just read this Guardian article by Noam Chomsky:

A common refrain among pundits is that fear of radical Islam requires (reluctant) opposition to democracy on pragmatic grounds. While not without some merit, the formulation is misleading. The general threat has always been independence. The US and its allies have regularly supported radical Islamists, sometimes to prevent the threat of secular nationalism.

A familiar example is Saudi Arabia, the ideological centre of radical Islam (and of Islamic terror). Another in a long list is Zia ul-Haq, the most brutal of Pakistan's dictators and President Reagan's favorite, who carried out a programme of radical Islamisation (with Saudi funding).

So now I really am wondering whether the US will support the Muslim Brotherhood.